Amaretto Sour

I wrote this for a creative writing class last spring. I don't know if it's finished, as a piece of writing, but it's been revised a bit. Please be kind, I worked really hard on fixing this up and I haven't written anything in HTML since a class I took in '99.

She turned her head to look at him, staring him down incredulously, and he didn’t seem to care. He just turned up the stereo and changed lanes.

"You’re such an asshole. Do you know what an asshole you are?"

"I is what I is." He replied nonchalantly. "So, what are we doing now?"

"I dunno… back to your place, I guess." Sure, Tom was an asshole, but she was intent on having sex tonight. She had spent the morning in the shower; shaving her legs and per Tom’s request, shaving off her pubic hair. She washed her hair with her rose scented shampoo that induces faux-orgasms on TV, and lathered more over her body.

While not quite living up to its commercial billing, the scent made her more aware of her senses, some that she often neglected to explore. It was the opposite of transcendence, of being outside herself, but thought it felt very similar, a peaceful meditation of its own sort. She imagined that that evening she would lay with Tom and he would hold her closer in a covert move to smell her hair. But she knew that details of that sort were probably wasted on him. He didn’t have a keen sense of smell anymore, due to numerous broken noses.

She looked over at him again trying to figure out what exactly it was about him that was so irresistible. She watched him as he bobbed his head and sang along with Eric Clapton. No, she was mistaken. Last week, Tom had corrected her. "No, not Clapton. It’s Derek and the Dominos."

"Well, he sounds a hell of a lot like Clapton."

"That’s because Clapton’s in the band!"

"Well, then I was right!" Well, she was right, wasn’t she?

"No, you weren’t."

"But you just said it was Clapton!"

"No, I said Clapton is in the band. The band is Derek and the Dominos." Tom always had some bullshit technicality up his sleeve.

"Whatever. You’re an asshole."

"Not whatever. Do you have any idea who’s in Derek and the Dominos?" He liked to take these opportunities to point out her ignorance and to ‘teach her the truth’.

She gazed at the beads of water hitting the windshield and became hypnotized by the slow rhythm of the wipers squeaking across the window. She began to take a mental inventory:

He says I amuse him and I make him laugh. He tells me stories of all the places he’s been and that we’ll visit them together. We’re taking a road trip to Canada in the summer. We’ll stay in cheap motels and eat at Dennys and say Ehhoser, what’re you talking aboat?’

His CD collection is huge and he tells me I’m stuck in a rut of 90’s alt.rock, but I point out that I also listen to 80’s pop and new-wave, so why doesn’t he shut the fuck up about it?

He’s a good kisser and good with his hands. Really good with his hands. But that damn piercing is too big… it’s always rattling against my teeth. I wish he’d get a smaller one. I’m a ‘trooper’ for putting up with it. He’ll only wear flannel boxers, snores and insists on sleeping on the left side of the bed where he hides his porn under guitar magazines, in the narrow space between the bed and the wall. And he thinks I don’t know about it.

His tattoos are pretty cool and I love to trace them with my finger, feeling the outline where the ink has raised the skin. The sacred heart on the back of his neck, wrapped in flames and thorns, and the Japanese dragon on his lower back. I love the reds and oranges of the sun on his leg, surrounded by the green and blue Celtic knot. There’s that black armband with the sun or the red octopus on his other arm. He’s got nice arms. Strong arms.

Poor bastard is already losing his hair. He’s only 25 now… what’s he going to look like in five years? I’m glad he shaved off the beard, though. He looked like a psychotic bum. But those damn sideburns! He looks like he’s going to a barn raising!

He’ll buy me drinks and make fun of me because I like fruity drinks and I ask the bartender to recommend something or to surprise me. He says it’s embarrassing and that I need to choose a signature drink. Fuck that! His signature drink is an amaretto sour, complete with the maraschino cherry. What kind of pussy drink is that? And what’s his trip with refusing to eat vegetables anymore. He can’t live off of the drive-thru at Wendy’s for the rest of his life, it’s just not healthy. Of course, his family’s got that heart condition, the men don’t usually live past 65, so he probably won’t be around that long anyway. Shit, that means his life is almost half over! He’s still partying and getting high all the time. I thought he cleaned that shit up before he joined the Navy… but since he got out he’s back at it. Smoking pot, no big deal, and hopefully he’ll outgrow the X and LSD. But what other shit is he doing again? Cocaine,heroin?

He’s a Libertarian and tells me I’m grossly uninformed about politics because I think the whole world is going to hell now that Bush is in office and that I might as well had voted for Nader after all. He doesn’t make me feel ashamed of my body, but he makes me feel ashamed of my mind and lack of discipline. He’s always talking down to me like I’m 12. I’m too uptight, take everything too seriously, have no sense of humor and that I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. That hurts. He’s such a fucking stubborn asshole sometimes, gets over-critical and yells, and then he gets all pissed off and breaks things, smashes his CD’s guitars and skateboards like they’re nothing. He’s never actually hit me, though.